Our Living Room Makeover

I’ve been wanting to redecorate our living room for ages. Since before Christmas in fact. We’ve been buying bits here and there, wall art, paint, cushions. But, as with many other plans, we just never found the time or the money to get the project off the ground. There always seemed to be something else that needed to be done first

It’s been getting to me, the state of our living room. It was getting to a point where I didn’t even enjoy spending time in that room. Dramatic, I know, but I’m dramatic about most things!

Lets rewind a couple of years, back to when we first moved in to the house. The people living in the property before us decided a ghastly dark red was a great colour for the living room walls. I’m afraid I disagreed with their choice of decor. Coupled with an old floral sofa which looked like it was just visiting us from the 80’s, the room didn’t feel very homely at all. This was at a time when we’d just relocated from England to Northern Ireland, and money was tight, so there wasn’t much of a budget for decorating. We managed to get some cheap paint from the car boot sale, in neutral and brown tones, and we did what we could to make the room feel more homely.

The room stayed that way until a couple of years ago, when we decided on a full revamp. The room had obviously been done quickly and on a tight budget, and it just wasn’t to our taste. In autumn of 2014 we decided to change the furniture, get new sofas and completely change the room.

After many hours on pinterest, I decided on a hunting lodge style living room. We painted the walls a chocolate colour, and added in some tartan and a lot of stag related accessories. I loved it, it felt so cosy at the time. I loved closing the curtains at night, turning on the lamps and sitting by the fire.

In the last six months my opinions about the room changed. What once felt warm and cosy now felt dark and despairing. I started to look at the walls I wonder what the hell I was thinking. Dark brown on the walls, really?! I still don’t know why I thought that was a good idea. As you can probably see from the photo above, it’s just a lot of random shades of brown. Even with the curtains open and the lights on, the room was still very dark. Not the best of environments for a blogger to be taking photos in, I can tell you!

And so, this week we’ve redecorated the whole thing. I’ve always been a sucker for monochrome, but my husband has never really been keen. Over the last few years I’ve managed to let it creep in to different rooms, before finally managing to convince him that we needed it in the living room. Again I turned to pinterest, looking for inspiration. My pinterest board mirrors my ideas, which you can see here.

So like I said, we’ve been picking up bits here and there. We got a couple of black and white cushions from TK Maxx, and some wall art from Very. We were waiting until we could find a rug and some curtains to finish the look, which arrived last week.

On Monday while I was at work, my husband moved all of the furniture to the centre of the room and started to paint over the dreaded brown paint. I wasn’t expecting much progress, so imagine my surprise when I arrived home in the evening to a brand new living room!

We didn’t have money in the budget to replace the sofa and chair, as much as I would love a new grey sofa! I was worried about how the brown sofa would fit in, but I think it looks great. The cushions make the sofa like a new piece of furniture! Initially I had planned on going for a full black and white look, but I think the addition of the grey rug and curtains works really well. When you throw in the pug cushion and the wall canvases, I’m really impressed with how it turned out.

It’s not quite finished, I would like some new prints for the wall and I have some photo frames which I’m going to revamp so they fit in with the theme. Do check back in a few weeks when I can give you an update! I love it so far though, it feels like a new house. The whole thing probably cost us less than £200, which I’m really happy about. And hey, now our monochrome cats look like part of the furnishings…

What do you think of our living room makeover? I’d love your thoughts in the comments!